"Aye, pugnacious—always wantin' a row, looking round for things to fight, like so many little people. And he can shoot—he can flick the eyelid off a weasel! Well, that'ud want doing at ten yards. But, to speak as you chaps do, I guess he can shoot. That's good. He'll want to know how in the next few hours, if we're to get through the Germans. Now, boys, up we go!"
They waited, however, in the dug-out whilst Bill clattered up the stairs and so to the curtain. Peering out, he discovered it was already dusk, though he could still see the German sentry. The man was trapesing up and down in less soldierly manner—he was slouching in fact—looking about him a great deal more than he had done before, and, if only Bill could have read his mind, was wondering how long it would be before the dusk was sufficiently deep to allow him to bolt away suddenly from his captors.
"Only, then there's the alternative," this hulking German was saying to himself. "I must return to our forces—I must continue fighting. Ah! that is terrible! I am tired of it—always it is fight on! fight on!—for victory! We Germans outnumber them by hundreds of thousands, and then, where is the victory? Not at Verdun—where I fought! Not at Ypres before it! Not since then anyway. And now in this great 'push' shall we attain it?"
It was a question which many another German was asking himself at that moment—many indeed of the High Command. For Germany was staking everything—her very existence—upon this enormous and sudden offensive, which she had launched against the British Third and Fifth Armies. We have already recapitulated the facts of the case, and will only remind the reader that on March 21st, when this assault was opened, Germany's eastern front facing Russia had been almost completely depleted of German troops. The railways across Germany from Russia into France were almost worn out with the constant transit of battalions; and here they were—they and those guns—those guns manufactured by Britain for Russia and treacherously handed over to the Germans. Here they all were—thrown pell mell at the British—and already the line had bulged back, thanks to this enormous mass of fighting material and to a favouring mist; and the line was to go still farther back. Indeed the Fifth Army was to experience on this day, and for almost ten days following, as severe fighting as ever troops took part in on the Western Front. Nothing but swift retreat, fighting every inch of the way, could save the British line; nothing but constant pressure, giving here and there as German masses became overwhelming—constant pressure, with retreat at the psychological moment, and taking advantage of every coign and vantage-point—that and only that, with British valour behind it, could save the line and hold up this gigantic massed attack on the part of the enemy.
We may advance the story a little with advantage. The Fifth British Army, which by all the canons of warfare should have been annihilated, considering its inferior strength and the enormous advantage the mist gave the enemy—that army retreated rapidly at first, but maintained cohesion between its various units. It fought night and day, it fought for every foot of the road from Peronne and back to the valley of the Somme. It held up the German advance here and there and everywhere, and melted away from it as huge German reinforcements were brought up. It smote the enemy battalions, it laid thousands of them in the dirt, and finally, after days and nights of an ordeal which would have tried the best of troops, it passed the line at Albert, running north and south, where the British and French trench line had rested from 1914 onwards to the summer of 1916, until, indeed, the Somme battles were fought. There it settled down firmly like a rock, holding up further advance on the part of the enemy.
During these strenuous days the Third British Army, on the left of the Fifth, also fell back as respects its right flank, inflicting very severe casualties on the enemy, while French reserves and American troops were poured in the direction of Albert and Montdidier, where soon the Germans were beating against the Franco-American-British line ineffectually, fighting desperately to continue an advance and to force the British into a rout.
That retreat will, when its details are better known, be viewed as of as great historical importance as that from Mons to the south-east of Paris in 1914. Indeed, in a measure and in its own particular way, it will demand closer attention and perhaps greater admiration on the part of a future generation. For, whereas the retreat from Mons was performed by the British Expeditionary Force when small in numbers as compared with the enemy, the fighting was less strenuous, manœuvre warfare had only just commenced and that at the very commencement of hostilities. The retreat from Peronne to the Somme and across it was, on the contrary, manœuvre warfare following a long period of close trench warfare. In it the utmost use was made of mechanical means of killing people. No cavalry screens could hold the enemy off as our fine cavalry did on the road to the south-east of Paris. It was a case of machine-guns and trench mortars in front firing into the British, and British machine-guns and rifles attempting to hold up the advance of a horde of men armed to the teeth, behind whom were masses of guns constantly being hurried forward.
This retreat, however, is analogous to that from Mons in one respect, in that our very gallant French ally fought shoulder to shoulder with us. It marks as well a stage absolutely apart, a new era in this gigantic war in that at this moment American troops appeared, to fight shoulder to shoulder with us. Not yet had American troops appeared in force. There were some hundreds of thousands of them already in France, but the bulk—the millions that America can and will place in the field if need be—were still in America, five thousand miles distant, and time and ships were needed to convey such armies and the material essential for them. Those American troops, let us add—forerunners of the vast army above referred to—acquitted themselves like men. Though only a few of the number then in France were flung into this battle they did wonderful work, so that Larry and Jim and Bill had every reason to be proud of them.
Mention of the last brings us back to our friends. Bill, emerging from the dug-out entrance, gripped the German sentry.
"See that?" he said, pointing down the lane, now hardly distinguishable. "Move on. Don't turn to right or to left—and look out—we shall be following you. If you try to communicate with your pals—well, there'll be trouble."